Does it Hurt?

A professional piercer will perform the piercing very quickly. It’ll take a second from the moment the needle touches your body, to the moment it goes through to the other side. And certain types of piercings – will take even less than a second. And that is about how long you’ll suffer. What you’ll feel is a prick, kind of like when you get a blood test or injection. So in fact you might say we all already got pierced when we were kids. That wasn’t so terrible, was it?

There are three factors that will affect the intensity of the pain you’ll suffer during the piercing:

Placement on the body: Nerve-rich organs are more sensitive than others. Of course, this is individual and varies from person to person (further more, I’ve run into clients that feel a different pain intensity level in parallel organs, for example, the nipples or ears), but the concentration of our nerves is similar. The locations considered as most painful are the genitals and the male nipple. You’ll get pierced in the rest of the locations, almost without blinking an eye.

Structure of the pierced organ: each of us has a slightly different body structure; for example, some people have meaty eyebrows – other’s eyebrows contain mostly skin, some of us have very small nipples, others – bigger ones, and so on. Usually, the thicker the pierced organ is, the longer it is for the needle to go through, and more noticeable the pain will become. But in many cases (for example, the female nipples compared to the male’s), it’s the contrary – the organ will be bigger, yet the nerve concentration will be the same. Meaning, dispersed on a larger area, and in fact, less concentrated. As a result, the pain will be less noticeable.

Your mental condition: Try to be as calm as you can during the piercing. because when you’re stressed out or frightened – many times, you’ll feel the pain more noticeably. Sometimes, people imagine feeling a pain that isn’t even there, simply because they expect it!
Many times, when I didn’t even touch the client with the needle, they started to cry out “ouch!!”… If you had a good breakfast on the day you get pierced, and you had a good night’s sleep the night before – the sensation will be easier to bare. By the way, from my experience, women in their period do not handle the experience as well. Maybe it’s the raging hormones, or maybe they’re simply not as calm, and maybe both…

To summarize: Different people handle the piercing experience differently. Each one – and their own pain-threshold (and maybe this is the place to point out that the saying that women have a higher pain-threshold than the men – is true…) If you pierce an organ that is not especially sensitive – you will have fun going through the whole piercing process. But even if you’re not, just distract yourself. Think happy thoughts, and a second later, it’ll all be behind you…

About anesthesia of all sorts
Don’t dare thinking for a minute about relieving the pain by drinking alcohol or the use of drugs before getting pierced! First of all, no professional piercer would agree to pierce you when you’re drunk or high. Even a small dose of certain drugs (Marijuana among them), or of alcohol, will cause changes in your body’s reactions and will interfere with the piercing process. And secondly, it simply won’t help you! Most times, you’ll achieve the exact opposite result and instead of relieving the pain – you’ll enhance it!
Don’t use pain reducing substances that you’re not familiar with. These might be great for certain things, but for the pain that most piercings inflict – they can’t help at all. In some parts of the body, usually in the pink tissues such as the lip or nipple – they’ll cut the pain down by 10%, not more. If you really insist – many piercers have pain-reducing spray or cream. Just ask.
The only way of totally avoiding the pain and suffering no side effects – is a local anesthetic with a shot. But that’s something only a doctor can perform, and you’re not going to hire one for something you can easily go though without, are you? And anyway, I think it’s a bit silly sticking a needle in yourself so you won’t feel the piercing needle…

So c’mon, they all went through it before, and so can you. I was 8 days old when they cut off a piece of my… So what’s a little needle prick for you?